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Turntables; when nostalgia is more powerful than hearing.
Talented turntable designer Allen Perkins, the brain behind Spiral Groove, Immedia's RPM turntables, and various SOTA models, is first and foremost a jazz drummer. Yours truly, after pounding soul-funk beats up and down the East Coast in a silk jumpsuit during the 1980s, played and studied jazz drums for years.
Allen, who are some of the greatest jazz drummers?
"Buddy Rich, because he showed all of us what exceptional technique looks like," Perkins responded, over email. "Joe Morello was exceptional like Vinnie Colaiuta is today, but Buddy was the one with the showmanship to dazzle the public."
What about Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, and Philly Joe Jones? They set the course everyone followed.
"Elvin Jones, for sure," Allen agreed, "he was the most original. You can trace Tony Williams and other great influences. But where did Elvin's approach come from? He seems self-made."
I agree regarding Vinnie Colaiuta, he may be the most gifted drummer since Tony Williams. But Jack DeJohnette is the greatest living, pure jazz drummer. His work is documented over the past 50 years with Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and many more.
"Peter Erskine," Allen countered, "because he embodies so many stylistic influences and can contribute to any musical situation: Weather Report, small combos, Joni Mitchell, and literally hundreds of movie soundtracks. He is a unique blend of historical knowledge, classical training, and impeccable taste."
Enter the MasterDeck
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the MoFi Electronics MasterDeck turntable ($5995), as the brainchild of Perkins in his role as MoFi's Chief Analog Designer, lies in the question of how his background as a jazz drummer has shaped his approach to turn table design. How does the rhythmic sensibility of a percussionist translate into the meticulous engineering of a turntable?
"It's a little complicated," Perkins wrote over email. "Being a drummer, I am sensitive to timing in music, so it makes me sensitive to problems. However, it does not provide any direction for solutions. It could be seen as an annoying awareness as a listener, like perfect pitch. In my case, it is an advantage because I love to solve problems, in general, so I persevere and have a built-in sense to assess what I've done."
The MoFi MasterDeck (footnote 1) is testament to Perkins's design philosophy as expressed in his Spiral Groove SG1 and SG2, Immedia RPM, and SOTA turntables, even sharing a familial resemblance to the Spiral Groove turntables in its tapered platter design. However, the similarities end there. Crafted with components sourced from the Midwest and Asia, and assembled in MoFi's Ann Arbor facility, the MasterDeck strikes a unique look, sleek but substantial. Wider than it is deep, with an exposed gold rubber belt driving its nearly 15lb platter like a tiny sash surrounding a zaftig harem girl's waist, the MasterDeck is heavier than it looks. Its wide, cruiser-like profile, composed of a constrained-layer plinth, is topped by a two-tiered aluminum plate, evoking the layered complexity of an Asian rice paddy. The 10" tonearm, a Perkins original, contrasts the turntable's solid form, which appears to use a mass-damping approach, with its slender elegance.
Perkins's tonearm consists of a carbon-fiber armtube made with an internal taper to aid rigidity and damping. "The rest of the materials are common to all arms," wrote Perkins, "including stainless steel (cueing lever), aluminum (removable headshell), plastic (VTA wheel) and in this arm, synthetic sapphire and ruby for bearings. The counterweight and its thumb screw are steel."
Combining Perkins's years of turntable and tonearm design (as in his Centroid models), the MasterDeck tonearm offers an expected, high degree of adjustability. Azimuth, vertical tracking angle (VTA), overhang, vertical tracking force (VTF), and antiskate are all finely tunable parameters. The arm's hardwired cables, utilizing Cardas Audio wire, ensure uniform signal transfer. Perkins's innovative design addresses potential resonances within the plinth and cartridge, while seamlessly blending unipivot and gimbal principles for optimal performance.
"For the lateral motion of the arm, we have three points of contact," Perkins explains in a video on the MoFi website (footnote 2). "There's a unipivot point supporting it vertically and two ruby balls that support it as it rotates around its axis. Those three points offer the fast energy transfer and the stability of the gimbal but still give the performance benefits of a unipivot. For the yoke, the part that works in the vertical motion of the arm, that is a more standard gimbal design except that we were able to locate very high-quality bearings that are rated for high performance in a function that requires tens of thousands of RPM speed which will never be seen with a tonearm. They are made to perform exquisitely beyond what a tonearm requires. The arm has unipivot advantages, [and] an advanced gimbal system for its vertical motion."
The tonearm features a removable headshell design that eschews traditional wiring contact points, thereby eliminating a potential source of signal degradation. Instead, direct connections are made between the tonearm leads and the cartridge pins. At the opposite end, Perkins's patented Spiral Groove counterweight system provides a level of adjustability and precision that is both elegant and effective.
As the counterweight travels across the pivot point, some of the mass is moved forward of the pivot point for lightweight cartridges; all of the mass is moved behind the pivot point for heavyweight carts. Keeping the mass close to the pivot creates low inertia for the cartridge while allowing the arm to handle a wide range of cartridge weights.
The MasterDeck's 1.75"-thick platter is a hybrid composition of aluminum and Delrin, the latter said to reduce resonances, "providing a remarkably stable and inert base for vinyl playback," stated a press release.
"Delrin has a close vibrational impedance to vinyl so it damps the record well," Perkins noted in the MoFi video, "and creates a good platform to have a quiet, well-damped record for the cartridge to perform over. It's a thick Delrin surface on top of an aluminum platter. Aluminum brings a different level of stability. The combination of aluminum and Delrin creates high inertia, a well-damped platter, and gives a good match to vinyl to aid in hearing the tonal balance as [instilled] on the master tapes."
"The platters of Spiral Groove 'tables were the same construction for the same reasons, but at about three and six times the price," Perkins explained in an email. "So, the MasterDeck platter is not unique in regards to originality, but to being offered at this price."
The MasterDeck features Perkins's Encapsulated Spiral Groove Inverted Bearing, engineered to minimize friction and reduce wear, reported to result in smoother turntable rotation. The Encapsulated Spiral Groove bearing allows the belt to drive at the platter's midpoint while retaining its balance at points above and below the point of rotation, further aiding stability.
"The principles of the design have been in all my 'tables since 1991," Perkins wrote over email. "The way they are implemented has varied in RPM, SG, and now MoFi turntables to address price requirements. The MasterDeck materials are stainless steel, bronze, precision steel ball and Teflon thrust pad encased in aluminum housings." The lower part of the plinth body is made of MDF; the next two aluminum layers above that hold switches and other electronics. The layers are bolted against each other, the different materials providing natural damping. The armboard is removable and also made from aluminum. All aluminum body parts are powder coated.
Footnote 2: See tinyurl.com/2wumzhk2.
Which you haven't. Lol.
to the list of stunning morons who troll the Stereophile comments section. You are welcome to comment but we will sh-t on you back.
This table intrigues me for all of the great implementations Mr. Perkin's has here. It may not look like $10k to some but I bet it sounds like it...
... removable headshell design that eschews traditional wiring contact points is a non-starter for me. Since there is already a set of contact points where the tonearm output cable plugs into the base of the tonearm, how much difference would be made by an extra set of contact points at the headshell?
At around this price point my choice would be the Thorens TD 1600 (or TD 1601) with the TP 160 tonearm.
https://thorens.com/en/thorens%C2%AE-td-1600-tp-160-en.html
https://thorens.com/en/thorens%C2%AE-td-1601-tp-160-en.html
https://www.lowbeats.de/test-thorens-td-1600-mit-tp-160-let-the-good-times-roll/